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Distance Learning for fun and profit...

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PORTALS MUAHAHHAHA PORTALS EVERYWHERE! Ahhh it's so good to finally comment on my favorite stories. I'm waiting for your mass effect one too.
 
That's irritation? A slice of life update chapter? Dude, don't take me wrong, but if I wrote a chapter to take out my frustrations on the world, well, a lot of the characters in the story would be dead. Still, great update.
 
Jordisk said:
Especially annoying when, for some tinkertech, the COLOR ACTUALLY MATTERS. Yes, that invisibility device does only work when you are tip-toeing, and the only activation phrase possible is "nin-nin". No, your power armor does NOT come without the paper and wax seals, they are integral to its function and we don't know why. Yes, that battery HAS to be blue and painted with a yellow lightning bolt, otherwise it is just a brick of moderately expensive materials. Tinkertech is WEIRD, and not ALL Tinkertech is "blackboxed technology": some of it is "shard doing things to objects". Hence why Triumph is a Tinker, a Tinker/Trump, but still a Tinker.
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Which makes a lot of sense from a world-building perspective, since the whole point of Parahumans is Shards stress-testing and optimizing their functionality, and there is a limit of what kind of technology 20th/21st century human civilization can reasonably produce, never mind a single individual. So for a Shard, constructing a Dyson Sphere or some other mega-structure is probably fairly trivial, and if a piece of Tinker-tech needs something like that, the Shard simply constructs it in another dimension and hands the Tinker a thematically appropriate inter-dimensional remote. The same would probably also be true for the more "real" technology Tinkers produce: So it needs some weird meta-material or exotic matter compound to function? No problem, the Shard knows how to produce all that stuff, and has the infrastructure to do so, and the Tinker gets to use their latest gizmo. If there's a scale from "they have to use the same tools as a normal person", to "their creations simply materialize out of thin air, fully functional", and another scale from "real technology, works on its own" to "really just a piece of junk, with the Shard doing all the work", each individual Tinker probably sits at a different point, depending on how their Shard chooses to express themselves.

The Taylor in this AU seems very intent on figuring out Tinker-tech, it will be interesting to see what she makes of the kind that has only the barest resemblance of real technology, or that requires the kind of large-scale infrastructure that Earth Bet really doesn't have. One possibility I can think of is that she eventually manages to co-opt a Shard or two to work for/with her and do some of the heavy lifting, but we will see how the author chooses to let things play out.

(Also, I think you mean Dauntless, as others have already pointed out.)

synnero said:
Me think that the individual shards know what they want to do and how to do it very efficiently... except their main body Zion don't give a damn except "bash things together for solution" usually while currently he is "too depressed to care".
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Isn't the whole idea that Zion is all of its Shards, each with their own purpose as part of the whole -- you know, like Shards dedicated to force-fields and such to protect the Entity, others for it to move around the universe, Thinker-type Shards to out-think any potential enemy they can't brute-force themselves through, and Queen Administrator and similar ones to make it work as a single organism, rather trillions of Shards all doing their own thing? And that this kind of hyper-specialization is probably very good at optimizing each individual function/Shard to an absurd degree, but not really conductive to any innovation beyond that, which is of course what the humans were supposedly there for in canon. That Zion's Avatar first ran around Earth Bet pretending to be Jesus and later blew a bunch of worlds up seems like a malfunction of sorts, but not something that affected Zion as a whole. After all, Parahumans still exist in Worm's epilogue, which means that Zion as a whole is still alive, even if the Avatar (and the Shard creating it) isn't.

EDIT: Ehh, what I was trying to say is that Zion's Avatar's purpose was to interact with humans, not to do any actual problem-solving, there's other Shards for that. So it makes sense that its approach would be "bash things together", because it never learned any different.
 
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scocdp said:
The Taylor in this AU seems very intent on figuring out Tinker-tech, it will be interesting to see what she makes of the kind that has only the barest resemblance of real technology, or that requires the kind of large-scale infrastructure that Earth Bet really doesn't have. One possibility I can think of is that she eventually manages to co-opt a Shard or two to work for/with her and do some of the heavy lifting, but we will see how the author chooses to let things play out.
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It's not so much that she's intent on figuring out tinker-tech as a major focus. That's just a side hobby that is interesting. One that the US Government is very interested in as well. Not to mention the entire scientific and engineering community.
 
I know it's a real word, only thanks to someone on SB mentioning it, but still (I read their thread first, this time). I was just curious whether the choice of words was a coincidence or chosen on purpose to refer to said webcomic
 
mp3.1415player said:
"On the day that the hunted unicorn crossed the valley of Erl Alveric had wandered for over eleven years. For more than ten years, a company of six, they went by the backs of the houses by the edge of the fields we know..."
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_The King of Elfland's Daughter_? Taylor, your literary taste in epic fantasy is impeccable.

Dave, as was only to be expected
 
Now if I was almost as paranoid and suspicious as Carol, I might think that the "dockworker" fighting off the "merchants" scene was constructed just to make Amy/Vicky feel better, all four involved being actors/agents. The various alphabet agencies watching over the Prime Asset know that those two are close to her, so they make a little scenario to either see how they react to that kind of situation or to let them feel good about themselves for doing a good deed, thus improving their social benefits to the Prime Asset.

Bit as I said that's paranoid talk, more likely it was a couple of loose unimportant Merchants jumping an Agent either before backup could arrive or with the rest not knowing he was being attacked or knowing that he could handle himself alone.
 
mp3.1415player said:
"Quite a few people moved out and others moved in recently," Taylor shrugged. "They fixed up a few of the houses, and what with the way the city's been getting more money in these days, a lot of the roads are getting fixed and stuff like that. Dad says it looks like it used to about twenty years back now. He likes it."
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Normal people moved out. Agents moved in.

"So do I," Vicky said. "The whole place is much calmer right now."
"Yeah," Taylor agreed happily, nodding to a man who jogged past in the other direction, who nodded back. "It's really great. Hopefully it will stay like that."
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Another agent. You think the area is clear until you attempt your snatch, then you discover that the jogger is a master of six different martial arts(and probably a parahuman), there's complete SWAT/Bodyguard teams in the houses besides the plainclothes observation agents.

Oh, and they aren't playing with non or less lethals.

Epic Reader said:
Given the various 'meetings' with people that have been going on, I honestly don't think ALL the security is intended to be subtle. I'm sure there's some extremely subtle security, but I suspect the black SUV's and some of the other security is absolutely intended to be noticed... and avoided, on the theory that if you can prevent even some incidents, you lower the risk the Prime Asset takes accidental damage.
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This is actually a common way for serious VIP protection details. You have inner/outer security, and open/concealed security. Basically, you have a bunch of obvious security to keep the idiots from trying in the first place, and to distract/channel the more serious into common lanes for the non-obvious security to deal with them.

Plus, if you have the obvious security take down the threat, you haven't thus disclosed your non-obvious security.

That said, the couple of black SUVs could have been going to pick up the stupid druggies, who was probably harrassing an undercover agent, having gotten a little too close to the Hebert residence.
 
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That reminds me, why isn't Amy being protected to the level of Taylor? As important as the government considers Taylor, surely they want to make sure the very nearby, very good healer is safe too, in case anything happens to Taylor they can use Amy to save her.
 
More words are always good, bummer that they came from computer frustration but at least that turned into something good

Taylor continues to poke away at the mysteries of the universe, Carol continues to be Carol, Vicky and Amy search for shenanigans to distract things

I liked the various nods Taylor gave to her horde of minders as she left with her friends, saying "no guys, they're okay, we're cool, thanks"

By this time I'm pretty sure that Taylor knows all of their names and who they're working with even if they don't know she knows
 
Puidwen said:
That reminds me, why isn't Amy being protected to the level of Taylor? As important as the government considers Taylor, surely they want to make sure the very nearby, very good healer is safe too, in case anything happens to Taylor they can use Amy to save her.
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They did see an awful lot of black vans around.

Though I'd say it'd be a good idea to read Amy in on the situation, pull her out of the Dallon prison household, and let Danny adopt her.
 
Puidwen said:
That reminds me, why isn't Amy being protected to the level of Taylor? As important as the government considers Taylor, surely they want to make sure the very nearby, very good healer is safe too, in case anything happens to Taylor they can use Amy to save her.
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Because shutting down the gangs and cleaning up the city isn't protecting her better than either the Protectorate or New Wave have managed, ever?
Really though, being in Taylor's orbit will mean she's covered by Taylor's personal spook detachment whenever her own bodyguard (darling miss Vicky) isn't around and anything more comprehensive would necessarily involve Carol Dallon and nobody¹ wants that. Plus next birthday if she doesn't get a personal forcefield phone from Taylor I will be quite surprised.




¹ Not Taylor, not Amy, not Vicky, not the PRT, definitely not the spooks, and not even Carol even if she doesn't know that yet herself.
 
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